Yeo, sup?

I have an older model Hubsan x4 (it was actually a clone of the hubsan but same thing), which has had a pretty rough time. It has now gone through 2 frames! Unfortunately it is now quite difficult to get your hands on a replacement frame for the older style hubsan (without the LED's), so I made my own!

HobbyKing sell small sheets of carbon fiber for around £7, so I though why not try my hand at making my own frame. The sheet isnt the toughest material in the world, and the carbon isn't woven but it is still very strong, doesnt bend too easily and an easy way to start working with cf.

OK, so we have a sheet of cf, how do we turn it into a frame? First approach was to start with a 100mm x 100mm square, cutting triangles out of the sides to make an X shape using a hacksaw. This approach worked ok but 100mm turned out to be far too big/heavy. I tried using a bit of sand-paper to round the corners etc. which also worked ok all be it a little slowly.

Another problem with this frame, was that I only tried drilling the holes after it had been cut down to quite a thin shape. The drill just snapped the end of the frame off.

Attempt 2

I started with a smaller 80mm X 80mm square this time, drilling the holes first. To give enough spare material around the edges, the holes were drilled about 10mm into the material. I am using 7mm motors from the Micro Motor Warehouse, so a 7mm drill bit was used. The motors didn't push in with just this, but a fraction of a turn with a circular file and the motors fitted in snugly. I still added some hot glue to make sure they don't move about during flight. I found a dremil with a sanding drum, was the quickest way to cut and shape the the cf into something that looked like a X. This time it was a lot smoother, if not very symmetric. I then re-soldered the motors to the hubsan fc board, which I then stuck onto the frame with a sticky pad, used a cable tie as the battery harness and was good to fly.

The whole setup weighs around the same as the original hubsan and fly's great!

I couldn't find any of the little charging cables lying around, so some ingenuity was required! It didn't even go on fire :)